Kristen Smith 
Amazon Web Services has launched AWS Secret-West, its second U.S. cloud region authorized to handle workloads classified at the secret security level. The new region brings cloud resources closer to mission operations in the western U.S., improving performance for latency-sensitive workloads and providing additional redundancy for classified applications, AWS said Wednesday.
How Does the New Region Support Defense Modernization?
AWS Secret-West is designed and operated to meet Intelligence Community Directive and Department of Defense Impact Level 6 security requirements. The region’s infrastructure is engineered to provide high-availability, fault tolerance, geographic separation and multi-region resiliency capabilities.
According to AWS, the capabilities will allow users to build and operate mission-critical applications across geographically distributed regions, process and analyze sensitive data while maintaining strict security controls, establish robust disaster recovery strategies, and leverage compute and storage technologies authorized for classified workloads.
Leonel Garciga, the U.S. Army’s chief information officer and a two-time Wash100 Award recipient, said in a previous AWS blog post that the AWS Secret-West Region will “enhance support for critical warfighting IT systems and data.”
“This new region offers key benefits that align with the Army’s modernization priorities and will function as a highly resilient backup site, safeguarding combat-essential applications and information from disruptions, thereby improving the lethality and readiness of our forces,” he added.
The region will also support artificial intelligence-driven innovation for defense and intelligence users.
